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Title:
A Ship of the Line
Series: Horatio Hornblower
#2
Author: Cecil Scott Forester
Rating:
3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Historical Fiction
Pages:
217
Words: 85K
While this receives the same rating as the previous book, I enjoyed myself much more because I was prepared for Hornblower to be a real human character and not a idealized paragon like I was expecting in the first book.
In this novel Lady Barbara is now married to an Admiral and Hornblower’s wife is pregnant. Hornblower loves his wife and does his duty by her, but he doesn’t respect her and I found that sad. She is who she is and while she’s not elegant, she loves him and does everything she can to support him. I don’t think Hornblower realizes how much of a blessing a wife like that is. Of course, the culture of money at the time didn’t care about that kind of wife, so the attitude would have trickled down without him even realizing it. Just goes to show that we can be affected by the culture around us without us even trying.
There
was some good naval action and Hornblower’s fight against the
Frenchies and their fiendishly devilish Freedom Fries was a good
reminder to all Patriots the world over that yes, they are Freedom
Fries and NOT French Fries. So don’t forget it. But seriously,
there were several scenes where Hornblower is calculating angles and
percentages in his head, in regards to the maneuvering of his ship,
and as a land surveyor it quite impressed me. Practice can only do so
much and then talent kicks it up that extra notch. It’s like adding
a little BAAAM with your spice weasel, as Chef Elzar would say.
Even though this ended on a cliffhanger, with Hornblower surrendering to some Frenchies, I didn’t feel the need to rush out and immediately read the next book. It was more like something to look forward to, seeing how Hornblower would handle captivity. I’m kind of excited to read the next book when it rolls around. That’s always a good way to end a book.
★★★✬☆
From Wikipedia.org
Hornblower has recently returned to England from the Pacific in the frigate HMS Lydia, having gained widespread fame (but no financial stability) as a result of sinking the superior ship Natividad in battle. As a reward for his exploits, he is given command of a seventy-four ship of the line, HMS Sutherland, once the Dutch ship Eendracht,[a] and which is, in Hornblower's estimation, "the ugliest and least desirable two-decker in the Navy List".
He is assigned to serve under Rear Admiral Leighton, Lady Barbara Wellesley's new husband. Throughout, Hornblower is torn between his love for Lady Barbara and his sense of duty and loyalty to his frumpy wife, Maria. His feelings for Maria are complicated by the previous loss of both of his children to smallpox.
Hornblower's first orders are to escort a convoy of East Indiamen off the Spanish coast. He successfully fights off simultaneous attack on the convoy by two fast, manoeuvrable privateer luggers. Since he has been forced to sail with an understrength crew, and had to make do with "lubbers, sheepstealers, and bigamists", he breaks Admiralty regulations and presses twenty sailors from each Indiaman just before they part company. With his ship now at full complement, Hornblower wreaks havoc on the French-occupied Spanish coast. He captures a French brig, the Amelie, by surprise, storms a French fort and takes several more vessels in its harbour as prizes, repeatedly fires upon several thousand Italian soldiers marching along a coastal road, and saves his Admiral's ship from certain ruin by towing it away from a French battery during a severe storm.
When Hornblower encounters a squadron of four French ships of the line that have broken through the English blockade of Toulon, he attacks them despite the odds of four to one, and manages to disable or heavily damage all of them. However, with many of his crew killed or wounded, including Bush, who loses a leg, and his ship dismasted, he is then forced to strike his colours and surrender. This novel ends as a cliffhanger.
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